Last month, Sutton Council was looking for ways to save £925K a year in waste collection costs. There was an online discussion where residents were asked to come up with ideas for making savings and also give their views on suggestions made by the council.

Some of the ideas such as reorganising waste collection shifts to enable the council to halve the number of vehicles are efficiencies that would have a relatively minor impact on residents. Others inevitably are focussing directly on how much of their household waste is being recycled by residents and how much is being sent to landfill.

Rewards for recycling

Rewards for recycling or fines for not recycling enough are among the options. Introducing penalties for bad behaviour isn’t a very popular idea among the public and also in many councils who would rather have constructive rather than punitive relations with their residents. Moreover, there are many practical difficulties in running a punitive scheme. It’s easy enough to put your waste in someone else’s bin unless every bin is fitted with a lock. A trial in Norfolk failed due to numerous technical problems and also led to a 250% increase in fly tipping.

Windsor and Maidenhead are in the process of rolling out a borough-wide recycling rewards scheme after a successful trial with 6500 households.

You can get fantastic rewards at participating businesses like M&S, Legoland, Magnet and Windsor Leisure Centres or you can donate your points to the RecycleBank Green Schools Scheme.

Chip and bin

As with the Norfolk scheme, Windsor and Maidenhead are using so-called chip-and-bin technology. Residents’ recycling bins are fitted with an RFID chip identifying the household to which it belongs. The bin is weighed automatically as it’s emptied into the collection vehicle and the weight is added to the appropriate household’s account. RFID is a short-range radio system that unlike barcodes doesn’t require manual scanning and enables bins to be identified automatically as part of the emptying process.

While we wait to see whether Windsor and Maidenhead’s scheme will have a positive long-term impact on residents’ recycling habits, there’s another approach we could consider. Instead of the council weighing your bin, why not do it yourself?

The quantified self

We’re all familiar with large organisations collecting data about us, whether it’s some part of government, or the supermarket recording our every purchase for their loyalty card scheme. Many people are sceptical about or outright hostile to the increasing amount of intelligence gathering directed at us as citizens and shoppers. Whether well-intended and well-managed or not, this database-building nonetheless chips away another little bit of our privacy.

But technology observers have recently been following the trend for some people to collect this kind of data about themselves. This concept of the quantified self pulls together a diverse set of self-monitoring and self-improvement practices in which people collect data about themselves, analyse it and use it as evidence to support decision making and behaviour changes.

Some quantified self (QS) applications need you to type data into a website. Want to ramp up your drinking? Try DrinkingDiary. Sex life too hot to handle? Bedpost can help you cool it down. Others use common gadgets like smartphones. Runkeeper will track how far and how often you run, where you’ve been and will let you share your progress with others in its own community.

Some QS apps are sophisticated product service systems that come with their own custom hardware that takes the pain out of data collection. Fitbit gives you a tiny clip-on device that works as a pedometer to track your exercise levels while you’re awake and monitors your sleep time and quality while you’re in bed.

The Withings Body Scale is no ordinary bathroom scale. It doesn’t just let you weigh yourself, it wirelessly and automatically transmits your weight to a central database, from where you can monitor your progress on the web and through various mobile apps.

So if we can weigh our bodies, why not our bins?

DIY chip and bin — the pilot project

My own “pilot project” for tracking my waste disposal has so far taken around ten minutes of my time and cost £3.50 in hard cash. The money went on a portable luggage scale that I picked up in my local newsagent and the time went building a simple Google Spreadsheet and form that lets me easily type in the weight of each bin bag before I put it out into the bins. Here in Sutton we’ve got a brown bin for landfill waste and a green bin for recycling. I’m weighing both. When I fill in the Google form the numbers get automatically added to the spreadsheet along with the current date. Then I can just total up the columns and see how much I’m landfilling and recycling over time. It’s a good start.

Despite its low cost and relative simplicity, my system requires a fair bit of effort to get started and to diligently weigh and record each bag as it goes out to the bins. But what if we could buy kitchen bins that did the weighing and recording for us like the Withings Body Scale? I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we can. Technologically it’s almost the same product, though the software would need adapting to the different context of having two or more bins recording weights of different waste products rather than a single scale recording many people’s weights. This isn’t rocket science.

But will you behave better?

What’s likely to be much harder than collecting this data is using it to help people actually change their behaviour. Someone who goes to buy or contrive a weighing bin is at least starting off with some motivation and a good intention. Sustaining that might be hard. As with many fitness apps, a social networking component where the user could share and compare their data with others in similar households might provide sufficient motivation and social reinforcement to keep going. A web-based system could send occasional suggestions for ways to waste less and recycle more, even in the form of advertisements for eco-friendly packaged products like those in Amazon’s 100% recyclable Frustration-Free Packaging.

Twenty minutes into the future…

Now imagine what could be done if this system had access (with your permission, of course) to your supermarket loyalty card data. Suggestions on how to substitute poorly-packaged products for comparable ones based on your actual shopping habits? Suggestions on how you could buy larger packs of existing products that would have proportionally less packaging? Having access to this info on your smartphone while you’re in the shop? Discount vouchers as a little extra nudge to get you started? It’s all perfectly feasible.

If people can do data for themselves, do councils still have a role to play? One way might be to sidestep the whole issue of people getting their own weighing bins and providing bin weight data collected through chip-and-bin straight to residents without operating a local penalty or reward scheme. Residents could then participate in any third-party reward scheme that they chose, most likely operated by a supermarket or another retailer. People would appreciate the choice and flexibility of being in control of how their data was used and could pick a reward scheme that suited them best. Retailers would have greater incentive to work with their suppliers to improve packaging. Councils would benefit from lower landfill taxes and greater recycling rates without going to the trouble of running their own reward schemes or getting out the thumbscrews.

Whose data? Our data!

The biggest barrier to making this happen isn’t the technology. We’ve already got that. The problem is getting the organisations that collect data about us to give us access. We need a new deal with the organisations that know more about us than we know ourselves: If you want my data I get to use it too and I get a secure way of sharing it with trusted third parties that can do something good with it that benefits me. If you want to log my phone calls or my purchases or the weight of my bin every time you collect it — show me your API. Quid pro quo or GTFO.

We’re starting to make good progress with the open data movement to get government to release its non-personal data for everyone to use. The next step is to get equal access to the personal data that government and business holds about us so it can work for us as well as it works for them. Then we can have an information society in which everyone benefits rather than an information technology society that just reinforces the status quo. It might start with our bins but it won’t end there.

Sutton Bookshare is a project that I’ve been designing for Sutton Council. It’s a website that lets local residents list their books on a website and then share with each other.

Bookshare is part of a wider project called Sutton Open Library that’s about opening up the library service to innovation. The whole project is funded through a grant from NESTA (a charity distributing lottery money) under their Make It Local funding scheme.

As well as the book sharing website, Sutton Open Library also opens up the main library service’s database so that independent software developers can access it and build their own apps for it.

Is Sutton Bookshare an attempt to cover for library cutbacks?

Many people have asked this question. It’s a fair question to ask.

While I work temporarily as a contractor for Sutton Council I do not speak for the council. So these are my personal views.

It would be very hard to see how Sutton Bookshare could substitute for any significant part of the library service. It has certainly not been designed with that aim in mind. In fact, the whole design direction of the project has been led by the principle that Sutton Bookshare is not a library. Every time I start transplanting library concepts into Bookshare I remind myself that Bookshare is unique and different and needs to work in a very distinct way.

One of the aims of Sutton Bookshare has been to make books that aren’t available in the library available for people to borrow. Most of my own books aren’t in the library service, so if you’re interested in design theory, urbanism and software development you now have access to books that you didn’t have previously.

Another aim of Sutton Bookshare is to build and reinforce personal relationships and social networks. Libraries can do this to an extent through clubs and other activities but the core library services are about borrowing items from the library, not other people. When you lend or borrow something in Sutton Bookshare you don’t just exchange a book, you get to meet someone who lives or works locally and almost by definition has a shared interest with you.

Sutton Bookshare also improves the library service. When you look at the page for a book in Bookshare you get a direct link to that book’s page on the main library service’s catalogue. This gives you options: Borrow it in Bookshare or borrow it from the library. For many people it will be more convenient to borrow it from the library. Bookshare provides another way to find books that are in the main library service.

What Sutton Bookshare doesn’t do

Sutton Bookshare isn’t a library.

Bookshare only lets you borrow books, hence the name. No CDs or DVDs.

Bookshare doesn’t give you a desk where you can sit down and work for a few hours in a quiet atmosphere.

Bookshare won’t let you catch up on the day’s newspapers or recent magazines.

You can borrow my books but you can’t pitch up in my living room for the afternoon. Sorry about that.

Open data makes the libraries better

The open data side of the Sutton Open Library project is all about improving the library service. We’re doing this by giving software developers the opportunity to build apps that help people find books more easily. This is nothing to do with cutting back the library service. It’s about making the library service better. Sutton Council has been fortunate to be able to attract outside funding for this work that will not just pay off in Sutton but will help to set standards and make similar work easier in other councils.

All software developed under this project is free and open source. Anyone can use or modify it themselves for any purpose. The code is here on Github.

So what about the cutbacks then?

Like all councils, Sutton Council is reviewing its services in the light of funding cuts from central government. This includes the library service. If you’re a local resident and you want to get involved in the discussions about the future of the library service you can start here on the Speak Out Sutton website, the council’s consultation site. I have no more information about this process or influence on it than any other local resident.

But it’s my view that the scale and nature of Sutton Bookshare makes it a useful supplement for the library service but not a substitute for any part of it. My hope is that Bookshare becomes a useful thing in its own right. It’s more like a club than a public service, albeit one that’s organised by the council rather than independently. I also hope that the open data work on this project will make libraries more accessibile than they are at the moment.

A postscript for Amanda Craig

I’ve just listened to the discussion on BBC Radio 4′s PM programme with Sutton Council’s Daniel Ratchford and the author Amanda Craig.

Amanda seems to hold some odd views about books.

The first is that books are far too precious to lend. While I’d agree that books are definitely valuable in the sense that they’re useful and enjoyable, they don’t do any good sitting on your shelves. So I’ve listed 130 of my own books and while I’d definitely like them back, if I lose the occasional one then I can stand the loss. I offer things to share because I know that most people are honest and responsible. If you believed otherwise you probably wouldn’t engage in almost any kind of relationship, personal or commercial.

Amanda also thinks that sharing books is tantamount to stealing from authors. This is because when you borrow a book from a library the author gets a small payment (the Public Lending Right) but when you share a book with a friend the author gets nothing.

I think this is terribly narrow-minded.

Sharing books on a relatively small scale doesn’t threaten authors. People stopping reading books threatens authors. Sutton Bookshare is a small project that in its own way will help people discover and read new books. Authors will benefit because those same people will be far more likely to visit a public library or buy books subsequently. It’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that someone might borrow one book by an author on Bookshare and then buy another.

When you’re looking at a book page on Sutton Bookshare you’re also three clicks away from buying that book on Amazon. Bookshare links directly to Amazon’s search for that book.

The threat to authors comes largely from other things. It comes from the time people choose to spend doing things other than reading books because they now have more options. Watch YouTube or read? Fool around on Facebook or read? Play computer games or read? Listen to internet radio or read?

A project like Sutton Bookshare and Sutton Open Library is the wrong target. We’re getting people hooked on books not taking money out of authors’ pockets. Authors, libraries and of course readers will benefit.

I’ve always spent a lot of money on books. I probably always will because it’s very unlikely to be convenient or even possible for me to get all the books I want through borrowing from people or libraries. Authors should be scared of Facebook and World of Warcraft not book sharing.

Walsall Council tweeted their activity for 24 hours on 4-5 March using the #walsall24 hashtag. Here are my responses to points made in a discussion on a Guardian article about this project. The whole discussion thread from the Guardian was subsequently deleted for unknown reasons.

Many of the tweets are trivial and banal (Atomant77)

Taken out of context, just about everything is trivial and banal. The time of the next bus from here to the town centre is trivial and banal unless you’re here and you want to get to the town centre.

But that’s what happens when you release comprehensive information about something. Most of it isn’t of interest to most people. Conversely, there tends to be something for everyone. Just look at the Freedom of Information requests that people make.

I don’t live in Walsall but I was very interested to see that there was a clairvoyant appearing at a council library to teach Tarot. As a rationalist, I don’t think this is the kind of thing councils should be subsiding. Does it happen in my area, too? It turns out that it does. I’ll be following this one up.

When you’ve got information on a computer you can slice and dice it any way you like. Cut through the mass of information you don’t care about to find what you do.

Twitter isn’t a good medium for reaching Walsall’s residents. It’s just for the “chattering classes”. What about my 85-year-old gran? (liberalcynic)

As Chuffy and HenryHomer said, this is an experiment. It’s not a new council service and they won’t be doing this every day.

If councils are going to improve their services over the long term they need to experiment with new ideas. This doesn’t mean committing massive resources to untested ideas. It means doing exactly what Walsall is doing here: Short, one-off projects that are cheap and have no adverse impact on other services.

You don’t have to have a very long memory to remember when councils didn’t have websites. And if you remember that, you’ll probably also remember the people who were resistant to councils having websites. The internet was just for geeks and the chattering classes, they said. Well, look at it now. No, we still don’t have everyone online (nor equally good access for those that have it) but I hope no-one seriously still thinks that the web is a waste of time.

With half the country now on Facebook, councils learning how to use social media looks pretty important, not only because there’s already a huge audience there but because most of the other half will follow soon enough.

More generally, this project is about capturing and disseminating information. Just because it passes through a computer doesn’t mean that it’ll necessarily be consumed on one. Web pages can be printed out. So can RSS feeds. Data feeds can be displayed on public screens like the countdown boards at bus stops and train stations. Software can send out text messages that can reach just about everyone. I’m looking at #walsall24 and thinking, “How could we automate this? What else could this approach be used for?” I see nothing wrong with Walsall blazing the trail here for others as well as themselves. Everything has to start somewhere.

Walsall’s Twitter experiment is a drop in the ocean, but reminding people of all the shitty stuff that councils do is no bad thing. (Chuffy)

… and …

It’s just a shallow PR exercise to make the council look good (liberalcynic)

It may have “image” benefits in a PR-sense but I think this is more about engagement than self-promotion.

Many people missed the point of #gmp24, which as I remember it was to show people how much time Greater Manchester Police spent doing “social work” rather than fighting crime. It wasn’t so much “see how wonderful we are” as “see how our time gets wasted”. They wanted people to think about the role of the police and how it could best serve the community rather than affirm what a great organisation they were. What Walsall is doing with #walsall24 seems similar to that aim.

In my view, esteem has to be earned. If proper communication helps services to be accessible, efficient and popular, then esteem for the council will surely rise. (liberalcynic)

I take this point entirely. Councils should be engaging with residents and making themselves accountable to them rather than bigging themselves up. #walsall24 certainly couldn’t be rolled out as it is as a regular council service, but I’ll definitely be trying to think of ways in which some of the ideas could be applied to realise tangible benefits at a sustainable cost. Birmingham’s civic dashboard is taking steps in that direction and I expect to see far more realtime, fine-grained information being made available by councils and used across many media.

There are five types of potential users for open data and data-driven apps:

1. data experts and computer scientists who can use semantic web technologies;
2. software developers who can use XML, JSON, etc.;
3. power users who can use CSV, spreadsheets, RSS, KML/Google Earth, perhaps Yahoo Pipes;
4. general users who can use a web browser;
5. offliners who need printed materials, ambient displays, public screens etc.

Most of the focus seems to be on providing data for data experts and developers so they can build apps for general users and power users. We need more data suitable for power users to use directly and more apps for offliners. We’re all offline sometimes.

My own app for offliners is QR Code Posters which will print a poster from any RSS feed. See how it can be used here.

Sutton Open Maps caters for general users, power users and developers by showing draggable Google Maps of local features along with KML (Google Earth), XML and JSON downloads on the same page. Whether you want to just find a local recycling centre, download the data into Google Earth for a school project or build your own app from the data, you’re covered. (It’s open source, too.)

This post started life as a comment.

I’m a big fan of London’s Barclays Cycle Hire scheme. I praised it when it was introduced, I created a free API service for developers to help them get live data about bike availability to make useful apps for people, I built a realtime 3D visualisation of bike availability and I even wrote a simulator to help me better understand bike movement patterns. I still think it’s a great system and I’m keen to do what I can to help people use it and to make it work better.

So when Boris announced that the scheme had just passed its one millionth journey milestone it seemed like a good time to ask Transport for London for the journey data. It’s an easy enough job: Just a single database query to fetch the times, origin and destination of each trip. If I could load this data into my simulator I might be able to see where extra bikes and docking stations might be needed. I put in a Freedom of Information Act request, confident that I’d have the data within the 20 working days limit required by law.

That was three months ago on 8 October. I’m still waiting.

The good news is that the data has just been made available in TfL’s developers’ area and some people are already starting to do interesting and useful things with it. But behind that happy fact is another example of a public body deciding to completely ignore their Freedom of Information Act responsibilities and the rights of an applicant in pursuit of its own perceived interests.

Data delayed is data denied

Under the law, public bodies have got 20 working days to reply either with the information requested or to claim an exemption. The time limit is there for a good and obvious reason: Without it, public bodies can string an applicant along indefinitely, and with many requests being time-sensitive this can often past the point where the information would be useful.

Fortunately I didn’t have a specific deadline for using this data but it certainly would have been more useful to me sooner rather than later. I could have been working on it for two months by now. And if TfL had been keen for other developers to use it, they could have had it too. Some developers were keen to get hold of it for the Open Data Hackday on 4 December last year but that came and went without any sign of the data.

So why was the data delayed? I estimate that there would have been less than two hours work to produce it and send it to me, or to put it on an open website where anyone could download the file.

“Your free information is in this locked box. Sign this contract and if we like what you’re doing you can have it.”

The answer lies in TfL’s desire to wrap the data in a complicated contract rather than make it available to me or anyone else directly and legally unencumbered. This might make sense in the context of some data and some data users but it’s directly inimical to the aims and indeed the law of freedom of information. The data in TfL’s developers’ area isn’t open data and it’s not available to everyone. As the site says:

Please complete the registration form below to use our syndication feeds. Before we give permission to use any feeds, we need to know how they will be used, where they will be used and how many people are likely to view them.

So why should anyone have to apply for permission to get access to their freedom of information answer? Why not just send it to the applicant?

The Information Commissioner, who regulates public bodies’ compliance with the Freedom of Information Act is quite clear that information must be supplied regardless of the identity and motives of the applicant. His guidance (PDF) states:

A request therefore has to be considered on the basis that it could have been made by any person; the identity of that person is not a material consideration when deciding whether or not to release information. It is for this reason that we do recommend as good practice that requests under obvious pseudonyms should normally be considered unless there is reason to think that any of the matters below need to be taken into account.

There follows some general exceptions regarding vexatious requests, people requesting their own personal information and costs issues, none of which apply in this case.

On the issue of the applicant’s motives:

There is also no specific reference in the FOIA to the principle that requests for information must be considered without reference to the motives of the requester.

However, there are no references in the Act indicating that anyone can be asked to provide a reason for requesting information and it is from this absence that the principle [of disregarding the applicant's motives] is drawn.

The Information Commissioner then quotes the Lord Chancellor’s code of practice on freedom of information:

Authorities should be aware that the aim of providing assistance is to clarify the nature of the information sought, not to determine the aims or motivation of the applicant. Care should be taken not to give the applicant the impression that he or she is obliged to disclose the nature of his or her interest as a precondition to exercising the rights of access, or that he or she will be treated differently if he or she does (or does not).

But if I want to get a response to my FOI request from TfL I am asked to enter into a contract with them whose terms include:

2.1.2 [You shall] only use the Transport Data in accordance with these Terms and Conditions and the Syndication Developer Guidelines, and not use such information in any way that causes detriment to TfL or brings TfL into disrepute. The rights granted to You under these Terms and Conditions are limited to accessing and displaying or otherwise making available the Transport Data for the purposes stated by You in Your registration.

So not only is TfL’s contract explicitly asking me to state my motive as a precondition of access, it also constrains me from using the information for any other purpose and arguably prevents me from using that information to criticise TfL, thereby causing it “detriment” or bringing it into “disrepute”. If I don’t agree to this they can deny access altogether and if I subsequently break the agreement in their view they can revoke access. This is a funny kind of free information.

The Freedom of Information Act is designed to enable scrutiny of government. It’s inevitable that some information requested may cause embarrassment to the public body providing it or even bring it into disrepute. If the law is going to be workable at all, public bodies must consider each application on its merits alone without concerning themselves with the applicant or their motives. To do otherwise would allow public bodies to effectively pick and choose which requests they answered. TfL’s decision to require me to enter into an extremely restrictive contract with them to get a response to my freedom of information request is applicant and motive discrimination by the back door. It’s not something that should be tolerated from TfL much less adopted by other public bodies as a way to weaken FOI applicants’ rights. Free information should not come wrapped in a restrictive contract wall. That’s why I won’t be accepting TfL’s terms and I’ll simply have to leave the analysis of this Cycle Hire data in the very capable hands of others.

1. News is for residents. Press releases are for journalists. Thou shalt mark the distinction and honour it in all thy labours.
2. Thy reader is not an Editor and does not require his Notes. Likewise, his news shalt end when it ends, not when he espies “ENDS”.
3. Thou shalt reveal thine identity and authorship of thy works. Thou art not the Masons, at least not officially.
4. Thou shalt adopt a friendly and approachable tone unlike that employed by Global Megacorp plc when announcing Q3 sales results or a Soviet republic proclaiming its turnip yields.
5. Councillor Joan Bogus, cabinet member for soundbites, said, “Thou shalt not contrive to quote thyself nor thy colleagues in thine own works. If thou hast something to say thou shalt just say it, employing the first person singular or plural as appropriate.”
6. Thou shalt write headlines that encapsulate thy story complete, not contrive to employ a witty device nor tease thy reader as to its import. Thereby shalt thy reader not waste her time clicking on irrelevant links nor suffer though passing over vital facts.
7. Thou shalt reveal thy personality and point of view, or where such things are absent, contrive thine utmost to appear to possess suchlike without such conceit being divulged. Thou shalt reject the entreaties of thy colleagues who both hold dear and embody the axiom that professionalism and personality are mutually exclusive.
8. Thou shalt labour to convey why thy reader might care, thus attempting to pass the “So what?” test at the earliest juncture.
9. Thou shalt labour to accompany thy words with relevant and high quality photographs of the people and activities described therein. Thou shalt forswear stock photography libraries and all their evil works and the half-arsed efforts of thy colleagues who, while possessing fine photographic equipment in their hands, possess none between their ears.
10. Thou shalt not recycle thy news headlines for thy tweets nor thy Facebook status updates but shalt write such material afresh to consider properly the tone, audience and constraints of those divers media.
11. Thy works have great social value but no commercial value. Thereby, thou shalt release thy works with a Creative Commons licence such that others might republish them and spread thy word. Thou shalt enjoin thy colleagues who fear such measures to get over themselves. The sky will not fall on their heads, for goodness sake.
12. Above all, thou shalt value thy reader’s time and not treat thy website as a repository for dismal and ill-conceived works that thou would rightly balk to print.

One of the biggest impediments to councils implementing RSS feeds and other forms of open data is a lack of imagination about what they and the rest of the world can do with that data. The classic use case for RSS — reading it in a feed reader such as Google Reader– doesn’t appeal very strongly to most people that don’t already use feed readers. As much as they are useful for some, feed readers are unlikely to ever be used by a majority of web users.

Lately, some councils have discovered that having an RSS feed for their news is an easy way to get onto Twitter. They just post the items from their news feed automatically with TwitterFeed. While Twitter works best as a conversational medium (they don’t call it social media for nothing) simply streaming your news to a Twitter account isn’t a bad place to start.

Another option is delivering RSS by email. Anyone using RSS can easily enable this just by linking their feeds to FeedMyInbox. If you’re using Feedburner, that’s got an email delivery option too. No programming, no list management headaches. Feed-to-email is criminally overlooked by most RSS publishers, many of whom commit huge resources to running standalone email newsletter systems.

Now I’ve created QR Code Posters, a spinoff project from Mash the State to give people another useful RSS tool.

First and foremost, QR Code Posters just makes it easy to print the contents of an RSS feed. Despite living in an increasingly wired world, paper is still massively important. We’re surrounded by it and by and large it works. A paper poster or flyer gives your information a tangible, physical presence in the world where it can be noticed and read without using any technology at all.

But as the name implies, QR Code Posters also generates QR codes for each item of an RSS feed. These can be read by mobile phone users with appropriate software. The phone will then jump straight to the webpage for that RSS item. It’s very quick and very easy. See something of interest on a poster — “blip it” — and off you go with the full page.

Here are some QR Code Posters in the wild. We used Sutton Council‘s feeds for news, jobs and public consultations, then augmented those with a local planning applications feed from Planning Alerts. Stonecot Hill in south London, where this noticeboard is sited, sits on the boundary between Sutton and Merton councils. Planning Alerts lets us pull a single feed with planning applications within 800 metres of that point, from both councils. Perfect.

One very useful feature of QR Code Posters is that the posters are bookmarkable. So here’s a list of all the posters we used on this noticeboard tagged on Delicious Pinboard. The posters get generated dynamically every time they’re viewed online so the next time we visit this noticeboard we can just jump straight to these links and print them out again.

The phone used in the photos is an iPhone 3GS running QuickMark (i-nigma is a good, free alternative). Most smartphones can run suitable software. Search for a “barcode reader” or “QR code reader” for your phone.

QR Code Posters is integrated with Mash the State so if you’re viewing a page for a council that’s got feeds like this one for Barnet you can just click the BP icons to print posters.

Whether you’re a council officer or an information guerrilla, now’s the time to liberate your feeds from the web and get them out into the real world. And if your council is one of the 74% that still doesn’t provide feeds you know what to do.